Can the arts come up with an alternative to capitalism?

Back in the days when it was the done thing to rove the land, herding nomadic families and flocks, it must have been impossible to imagine an era when almost every inch of land would be owned.

Ring forts followed. Fast forward a few thousand years, and enclosing and owning became normal to the extent that even the common lands, an ancient shared right, were shut in. Thousands of herders, who had used these acres for grazing, starved.

Sometimes change happens slowly, and sometimes even when it seems a rapid swoop from the blue it has been a long time evolving. In the days of feudalism it could have been incredible to imagine the capitalist era; just as only a few (who usually ended up executed) dared to imagine a governance not administered by the divine right of kings.

In the early days of capitalism anyone predicting a future in which the value of things as yet non-existent could be traded in deals worth billion, would have been disbelieved.

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Similarly, once upon a time presumably well-intentioned people seriously believed that it would be bad for women, and for society, for them to have the vote.

In living memory some people also believed that whites and non-whites shouldn’t sit together, whether in cinemas or on busses.

But change does happen, and often from very small beginnings. The Climate Strike last week occasioned a republishing of the pictures of Greta Thunberg all alone protesting outside the Swedish parliament just one year ago.

So whether it’s Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus in Alabama in 1955, or Thunberg’s lone action last August, change is possible, and it can come from individual acts.

Perfect storm

But if capitalism was unthinkable in the feudal era, why do we seem to persist in believing that it has no alternative today?

During the last recession I genuinely, though naïvely, believed that the perfect storm of the economic crash, reduced production, reduced consumption, and increasing awareness of the environmental catastrophe would lead to a new way of doing things.

Instead recovery was envisioned solely in economic terms. Getting back to pre-2008 levels was the marker of success.

Capitalism shapes how we see the world, and using economic arguments to promote behaviours ultimately means we can only envision things in economic terms.

This bends things out of shape, most obviously in the arts, where the idea of a cost per hour of painting, writing or composing is impossible to gauge. Do you add thinking time? Do you set the clock, lawyer-like, the minute an idea hits you?

What about the necessary procrastination that precedes most creative endeavours? If an artist is going through a phase of making work that is not saleable, how do economics value that?

We need a rebalancing, if not a total new beginning.

Speaking at a Making In seminar at the Joseph Walsh Studio earlier this month, Connemara-based basket maker Joe Hogan eloquently described a different way of being in the world: "You don't have to own something to enjoy it," he said, encouraging the idea of looking beyond retail as a way of participating in society.

Unfortunately the short-termism of retail is currently everything. You can’t close core parts of our towns and cities to traffic because the retailers protest, and yet the traffic clogging our towns and cities is killing those places as civic spaces.

Solutions

If life right now was a thriller, or even a soap opera, we’d be at the bit where the audience is screaming at their TVs a version of “look out, he’s behind you…” Seldom have events conspired to serve up the solutions to our problems in such a blindingly obvious way.

Taking our present dramas in no particular order, we have: Brexit potentially sending the economy spiralling, and gumming up the supply chain; an environmental crisis of epic proportions; an ever widening gap between rich and poor; a housing crisis in major cities; and huge unrest in our very imbalanced food and agriculture industries.

It’s clear we need to make less stuff, share more so that people have enough to live on, travel (and rely on tourism) less, consume less, and repair and reuse the stuff we already have.

Instead, it seems like we’re in a modern equivalent of the last orgiastic days of the Roman empire, or the end of the Renaissance as it swung into the ludicrously Baroque: spending, travelling, accumulating, and valuing everything in terms of euros, pounds and dollars. Capitalism has gone too far. Things usually do.

Some might think it’s naïve to imagine an alternative to capitalism, but it’s equally naïve to think there won’t be major change coming. And if we don’t have a hand in shaping it, it will be shaped by other, less kind forces.

Perhaps the germ of a new idea is there in the arts, where people do things for their own sake, and value them accordingly. It’s worth thinking about and getting creative. Sometimes it only takes one person.